Dating fende guitars

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Many of the Art guitars created by the Custom Shop vastly expand upon Leo Fender's historical decorative innovations, who originally pioneered the use of custom colors on their instruments, which are essentially based on traditional designs but do not strive for accuracy to specific models.The Fender Custom Amp Shop, a subset of the Custom Shop, has produced several limited-run amplifiers during its existence.In 1984, CBS sold the rights to the Fender name and designs to an investor group of employees led by Bill Schultz who launched Fender Musical Instruments Corporation (FMIC).The Fender Custom Shop began in 1987, under the supervision of then-CEO Schultz.These models are meticulously crafted by hand, under the supervision of one luthier as opposed to part of an assembly line.

The Fender Custom Shop has produced a huge range of instruments, often limited in number, which reflect its original mission as a link between the needs of specific players and the Fender corporation and their established designs and innovations as a whole.An offshoot of Fender's forays into replicating the look of heavily worn instruments was the introduction of the Fender Relic series in the late 1990s.Urban legend states that idea came as guitarist Keith Richards of the British rock group The Rolling Stones told the Custom Shop that some replicas he commissioned for a Stones tour 'looked too new', stating: "Bash 'em up a bit and I'll play 'em," but this has been denied by multiple Fender employees and Richards himself.Closely related, and in some cases a direct result of collaborations with and for specific players, are the artist models that are specifically available to the public.Some of these models are designed to be near-exact replicas of a noted player's trademark instrument - including the "relic" treatment and the various degrees of ageing (patterns of wear, modifications, stickers and abuse) - such as in the case of the Jeff Beck Tribute Esquire, the Jaco Pastorius ersatz fretless Jazz Bass, and a replica model of Stevie Ray Vaughan's heavily weathered trademark Stratocaster.